IN OCTOBER 2015 , TalkTalk , telecoms provider to more than 4mn customers across the UK , was the victim of a cyberattack . As a company that prides itself on its customer relationships in order to provide the best service possible , it took the decision to completely reassess its technology operations and undergo a major transformation .
Overseeing this transformation is Technology Director Philip Clayson , who was given a very clear message .
“ I was told one thing – find out what happened and fix it ,” says Clayson . “ As we unpicked what had happened , a task that took us many months and included some of the brightest people , both internally and from our supplier teams , we soon discovered that there was a combination of things we needed to fix .”
Operating for more than 15 years , TalkTalk has grown via acquisition , and is an aggregation or a portfolio of a number of companies that have come before it .
This , Clayson says has created significant “ tech debt ” and that was part of the challenge TalkTalk faced . “ The technology we used was siloed , fairly segmented and not well integrated ,” he says . There were multiple generations of technology that we had acquired in our 15 years of operating .” Tasked with finding out how the cyberattack happened , why it happened and more importantly , how not to let it happen again , Clayson embarked on a significant journey of understanding .
“ We were trying to address 15 years of our history , remove our legacy and write the next chapter in a matter of months – a monumental task ,” says Clayson . The first step that TalkTalk took was to enlist the help of key partners , including Tech Mahindra , a company
122 March 2018